


And Nothing He Has Wrought Shall Be Lost

by JustJasper



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Frottage, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Saarebas, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-11 16:09:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7899199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustJasper/pseuds/JustJasper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dorian used to have dreams about this. The Qunari were the stuff of nightmares, and then of the kind of stories teenagers told each other to shock and scandalise, and then of rumour and speculation. While the image of strong, brute-ish qunari holding him down and ravishing him quite quickly became a staple of his fantasies, being collared and silenced remained a nightmare.</p><p>It hurts more than he imagined.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I shall not fear the legion

**Author's Note:**

> for a [kink meme prompt](http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/15543.html?thread=63442359#t63442359).
> 
> Thank you to [freakingdork](http://archiveofourown.org/users/freakingdork) for betaing.
> 
> This fic references the [Canticle of Trials](http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Chant_of_Light_Verses#Canticle_of_Trials) (1) from the Chant of Light, might be worth giving it a read before you start.

_Maker, my enemies are abundant._  
_Many are those who rise up against me._  
_But my faith sustains me; I shall not fear the legion,  
_ _Should they set themselves against me._

“Should have taken the ox,” says the Venatori, looking down at Dorian with a furrowed brow. A lined face and greying hair, a prominent scar on his jaw. Dorian's hands are bound, and the magebane tastes bitter on his tongue, doing little to mask that they made him bleed, hitting him to make him swallow it.

He's collared, too. It's all a little excessive. Or perhaps his reputation proceeds him so much they don't trust a collar or magebane alone to do the job of keeping his magic at bay.

“Did you see the size of it?” another Venatori scoffs, as he sharpens a knife on a whetstone nearby. Wiry and hollow-faced, hair shaved short and army tattoos on his neck. Snakes and swords. “Wait, which one? Their Inquisitor, or that merc they've got, primus?”

“Either,” the first – the captain – sounds disappointed. “Though, I'd hoped I'd get to break the big one. We'd have had to deliver the Inquisitor in one piece, but we could have cut pieces off that big ox for _weeks_ before it died.”

“My brother says their horns are potent,” another says. The same short-shaved hair and army tattoos as the one with the knife, but taller, wider, with ears deformed from repeated damage.

“Your brother is an idiot, Hugo,” the captain says, rolling his eyes. “Those horns _would_ have fetched a good price, though, because of idiots like your brother.”

Dorian can't help but growl at them for talking so casually about hurting his friends.

“What do you think, Pavus?” the captain says coolly. “I've heard how you're inclined. Heard all _sorts_ coming out of the Inquisition, too. How potent is he, that ox?”

Hugo guffaws.

“As if even a traitor would fuck those animals!”

He says nothing, though they haven't gagged him. But magebane is spiked with something, and nothing seems as clear as it did ten minutes ago.

“We going to ransom him?” Hugo asks.

“Probably. I'm sure his father would be useful, with the right leverage.”

“Or we could just sell him, right? The fighting pits always need someone who can put on a show.”

 _I shall not fear the legion,_ Dorian thinks, _should they set themselves against me._

The one sharpening the knife makes a disappointed sound. “That's no fun. You promised us _fun_ , Laurus.”

“I'm open to suggestions,” Laurus says, as casually as if they were discussing dinner plans, as he watches Dorian on his knees. Dorian holds his gaze, unwilling to submit under his stare.

“Let's take his skin off!”

“Velius, please. He must stay recognisable.”

“You'd let me take the ox's skin off.”

Dorian can't help the downturn of his mouth at the image that conjures of the Bull flayed. Laurus narrows his eyes at him, and Dorian rather thinks he's made a mistake – the other two are distracted and stupid, but Laurus has a clever face, and an observant gaze.

“Gone soft on the beasts, have you? Your perversions aside, I'd not heard anything to suggest you were a fool. You can't think those animals can be any ally of yours.”

“You and the rest of the Venatori are the fools.”

It's not as much wit as he'd liked to be able to muster, but it'll do. It's enough to get a reaction.

“Strong words, coming from the man on his knees, a traitor to his country, an enemy of the Imperium.”

“You're the enemy of Tevinter,” Dorian says, allows himself a small laugh with it. “The poison rotting her from inside. Not the Qunari.”

Laurus makes a thoughtful noise.

“Are they a kind breed? Do you think they drug their mages before they mutilate them? Velius, you were going to try this on the ox, yes?”

Dorian feels lead settle in his gut.

“You said he had to be recognisable,” Velius says, but he's got to his feet, sounding hopeful.

“Well if you can promise to do it with a little care...”

“Oh, yes! Let me get my tools!”

Dorian used to have dreams about this. The Qunari were the stuff of nightmares, and then of the kind of stories teenagers told each other to shock and scandalise, and then of rumour and speculation. While the image of strong, brute-ish qunari holding him down and ravishing him quite quickly became a staple of his fantasies, being collared and silenced remained a nightmare.

It hurts more than he imagined.

Laurus holds him down on the floor with magic – at least, he will think later, at least it kept him from thrashing and tearing his lips in struggle. Dorian tries to reach his own magic, but the magebane makes it impossible, and even if it leaves him hazy, the pain is clear and true.

“Seen a Qunari mage corpse once,” Velius says, as he makes a start. Dorian gasps at the sharp pain of a huge needle puncturing at the corner of his mouth, as Laurus and Hugo look on with interest. “Nasty stuff. Always wanted to try it out. Don't know why they use thread, though.”

Velius is eager but calm, humming a tune as he sews a length of thin metal wire through the skin above and below Dorian's lips, a continuous thread. Torture appears to be this man's craft, and he doesn't hesitate, pierces holes in Dorian precisely, pulls the thread tight as he goes. Ridiculously, Dorian is grateful for his steady hand.

Dorian can do nothing but breathe, so he breathes, tries to make them long, steady breaths. He swallows down the blood that pools in his mouth. He prays.

_When I have lost all else, when my eyes fail me—_

He can't even struggle, can't scream against the pain without making it worse.

_And the taste of blood fills my mouth, then—_

“Fine work,” Laurus says, when it's over, when they release Dorian's body back to him and he lies limp on the stone, with blood creeping down over his cheeks.

“How we going to feed him?” Hugo asks. “If we're keeping him to ransom, how we going to feed him?”

Velius pinches Dorian's nose closed, sending him into blind, fighting panic. He's weak, and held down easily even without magic.

_Draw your last breath—_

Even though his lips are sewn together, there's enough give to draw a sliver of cold air in, filling his lungs impossibly slowly as the metal thread pulls at his blooded, punctured lips.

“If he can breathe, he can drink. Let my stitches stay a few days, at least?”

Laurus waves his hand dismissively, and Velius removes his fingers from Dorian's nose.

_I cannot see the path, perhaps there is only abyss. Trembling, I—_

_*_

He has no idea how long he's been unconscious, when he finally comes to. His captors have made use of one of the cells and left him in it. As he peers down the line of them – two rows of cells, lining the walls of a long corridor leading to a doorway – it would seem his is closest to where the Venatori are camped out, and one of the few without skeletal remains in them. How good of them.

It's cold enough that the breath from his nose comes out as steam. Across the room, that which might have once been a jail, or from the layout of it perhaps a kennel, the Venatori are gathered around a fire, drinking wine. Pilfered from a cache in the dungeon they're in, he gathers, as he listens. It's mostly small talk about drunken escapades, the sort of thing Dorian would talk about with his own comrades.

It would always be easier if a willingness to mutilate another person was the mark of a monster than of a mere man.

He catalogues his body; his mouth aches, worse with even the slightest movement of his lips, though the blood has dried. His hands are bound in front of him and he's still collared, a heavy padlock at his throat. He's still fully dressed against the cold and they haven't stripped his armour off him, though his staff and knives are long gone.

“Do you think the Inquisitor will look for him?” Hugo says.

Laurus swigs from his bottle of wine. “She might. They're not a loyal breed, though. The oxmen on Seheron would never barter for captives, never stage rescues.”

“But we could still get her, couldn't we, if we used him as bait?”

He makes a noise of consideration. “She would be more valuable than Pavus. Might get our hands on that big ox, too. Take his horns, they'll fetch a good price.”

“Geld him,” Velius says eagerly.

“We could sell his cock!” Hugo cackles.

“You leave leave the cock, idiot. Nobody'll buy a slave that can't hold his piss.”

Dorian crawls across the cell floor, though it isn't very far to go to get to the front bars, marginally closer to the warmth of their fire, just inside the light it casts. His pauldrons knock against the stone, cloth rustles and buckles jingle as he settles, and his captors look around.

“How are you, Lord Pavus?” Laurus calls. When he doesn't – cannot – answer, they laugh.

“Not very talkative, is he?”

“You should consider your loyalties,” Laurus continues, as Hugo sniggers into his wine. “This is what qunari do to their mages. Your beasts are no different, deep down.”

With his mouth sewn shut, they don't dose him with any more magebane, and over hours he feels its effects lift from him. Things become clearer, more acute, and rather more terrible to endure, but he will bear it for the sake of clarity. He'll never survive if he loses his head now, so he doesn't think about it. He's staying silent by choice, not because he can't speak. Not because he has wire threaded through his face, trapping his tongue behind his teeth. He's fine.

_I shall weather the storm. I shall endure._

The torturer, Velius, is eager and distracted and small, barely filling out the Venatori uniform. Dorian could deal with him, especially still armoured as he is.

He has no doubt that Hugo has been punched before in his life, so he may well be able to withstand such things. It's a very punchable face, especially in that he keeps looking over and laughing at Dorian where he sits with his shoulder pressed uncomfortably against the bars of the cell.

Laurus is the main problem, and unfortunately seems to be the smartest of them. He could get lucky and take the others down, but the mage amongst them has already shown a talent for a full-body bind.

He has no intention of dying, even less of being shipped back to Tevinter with his mouth sewn shut.

They sleep in shifts, and Dorian doesn't sleep at all. Laurus writes letters – the draft of a ransom, it turns out, when the others gives their input. Velius butchers rabbits for pottage, and Hugo unsubtly paws himself through his trousers as he reads and re-reads a crumpled letter.

“Would you fuck a qunari?” he asks sometime later, as they share another bottle of wine.

Laurus huffs. “Try asking Pavus, he's so fond of beasts.”

“No, no. A girl qunari. If we'd got the Inquisitor—”

Dorian – who can't shout his protest, bangs his vambrace against the bars. They look over, and only Hugo doesn't turn away again.

“Oh, I'd have fucked her,” Velius crows. “Not _any_ cow, but _her_ , definitely. The great and powerful Inquisitor!”

Laurus has to shove the bottle on Hugo, who's still watching Dorian, frowning.

“If you want to fuck something, Hugo, then you can fuck Pavus.”

“Yeah?”

“Only I'm not holding him down for you, and you're not to do any damage.”

Hugo rises to his feet, hesitating. Considering.

“I'm going to give him some water.”

Dorian thinks of the Bull's war stories, where he talks around the terror he saw, scraps that have become terrible things in Dorian's mind. The inevitable violation of war, sex made a weapon – and this is a war. Better him than Adaar; she is too young, already bearing too much. What is one more reluctant fuck in his long life?

Hugo comes right up to the bars, and Dorian doesn't shrink away. He holds up a waterskin, and offers it up to Dorian's mouth. Perhaps he's decided against any violation; Dorian finds himself disappointed. There might not be as good an opportunity to get the upper hand than having one with his trousers around his ankles.

“Open up,” Hugo says, nearly giggles.

The water pours messily over Dorian's sewn mouth, down his jaw and into the collar of his robes, barely anything reaching through the minute gap between his aching lips, even as he tries to take the water in.

“Should have had some fun with you before we sewed your mouth up,” Hugo chuckles. “Heard the Pavus boy sucks cock better than any whore in the Qarinus dockyards. Bet my cock's bigger than the ox's too, you'd love it wo—”

Dorian reaches through the bars of the cell and grabs two handfuls of Hugo's shirt, and leverages all his strength to slam Hugo's face into the bars. His nose breaks with a clang and a crunch, and Dorian, on his feet now, slams him against the bars three more times before Laurus can grab his staff, find an angle and pin him to the back wall of the cell with magic.

“Well, that'll teach you,” Laurus says to Hugo, who is bleeding all over the flagstone and swearing wetly. He turns his gaze on Dorian as he releases his magical hold on him. Wisely, he's standing out of arm's reach of the cell bars. “Feeling better, are we? Without your magic you're just a caged animal. Appropriate, given today's discussion of your fondness for them.”

“I'll kill him!” Hugo yells. “Let me bend him over a barrel and fuck him until he tears his stitches!”

“Didn't your mother ever teach you not to stick your fingers through the bars at the animalarium?” Laurus almost sounds amused by the whole thing, but Dorian doesn't let his guard – for what it's worth – drop for a moment. “Go sit down and I'll fix your nose.”

Laurus pulls Dorian forward with magic, and then slams him back against the stone, rattling his skull and making him try to cry out in pain – pulling at the stitches over his mouth.

“Don't make yourself more trouble than you're worth.”

*

He manages to piss through the bars into the cell next door without drawing too much attention to himself. He doesn't sleep. His captors argue over their ransom plans, and Hugo glares at Dorian intermittently, nose healed but crooked and bruised.

The magebane leaves his system, and he can almost reach his magic. The collar is still dampening it, but now he knows it's there, instead of feeling an emptiness in the place where he's known it. He thinks of fire.

He can taste blood again, and he begins to wonder if the Inquisitor is coming for him. They must not be too hard to track through the Emprise, with all the snow to leave marks in. They haven't choked to death, so the dungeon they're in has ventilation, which must come out somewhere.

They wouldn't leave him to his fate. The Bull wouldn't.

_In the long hours of the night, when hope has abandoned me—_

His captors are growing restless when Dorian feels fire in his palm. He smothers it, presses his mutilated lips together firmly to hide his noise of triumph, and then his noise of pain.

Quietly, while they argue about how much they should demand of his father in ransom, Dorian presses his bound hands to the lock of his cell and sends ice into it. The same trick he used more than once to escape confinement in the Circles of his youth will hopefully serve him well now.

There's no plan, there never is. There are moves, tactics, but mostly it's not until the moment itself when Dorian knows gut-deep what to do. He is not going to die here. He is not going back to Tevinter.

The frozen lock shatters into pieces when Dorian sends a blast of magic through it. He can feel the weight of the collar, the way it tries to smother his magic as much a physical sensation as the metal against his neck, the padlock bumping his chest.

Velius is the quickest to react, jumping up and leaping into play with daggers drawn – Dorian slams him against the wall with the same trick they've been using on him, and releases him to slide down the wall, dazed long enough for Dorian to ready himself for an unfair fight.

Laurus next, trying the same – but Dorian is ready to press back against it, to shove the same force back against the oppression of his cast.

Hugo rushes at him with a sword, and he has to rely on the same trick to shove him back – Hugo is built strong, and he withstands the push, and readies another swing when Dorian has to strengthen his barrier against a crackle of lightning from Laurus.

He counters with fire, lines of it licking across the flagstone in the best approximation of a glyph he can make. Hands bound, and without a staff or words to channel it his magic is a wild thing, like a storm or a wave that he is trying to direct away from himself onto his opponents. They parry away from the flame, giving Dorian opportunity.

The room is a bottleneck, a long corridor with cells on either side, a more open area at the end that his captors have been using. His staff is there, amongst their loot, but Dorian steps the other way, down the corridor, keeping them at bay with force and fire. The ice he throws, not aimed at the encroaching fighters, he hopes they don't notice amongst the flame.

“Surrender, Pavus!” Laurus calls over the fire. “It will be easier if you give up now!”

He hits Hugo with lightning, and the soldier bears through it, and has to push Velius back with magic again to keep distance between them. Ten feet, fifteen, twenty.

“Surrender!” Laurus shouts again. “Or when we get you, I'll let Hugo fuck you however he wants! And then I'll let Velius do as he wants!”

“I'm going to take off your skin!” Velius jeers, as if Dorian had forgotten.

The room was once a kennel, Dorian is sure now – the bones are canine, and the spirits that linger here, the wisps, oh, they are hungry.

It hurts immeasurably, but he mumbles an incantation as best he can through his stitches lips, and calls to them.

_And nothing that He has wrought shall be lost._

The rabid, hungry spirits follow his call to the corpses, binding willingly to bone and papery flesh. Left to starve here, leaving intact bones, but for the ones with broken teeth where they tries to bite through the cell bars. They're mabari, he realises, from the distinct shape of the skulls that look at him through the bars of almost all the cages. They are loyal.

The venatori shout their panic, Dorian releases his cast fire so they can see the dozens of hungry dead things waiting. One howls, an unearthly thing without a body to make the sound; the rattle of bone and the call of the Fade. In a moment, they're all howling. If he could, so would Dorian.

The cell doors give way easily, where the locks are fragile with Dorian's ice.

He urges them forward, and they pad out of their cells, the click of bone against the cold floor. They carry the power of his conjured horror with them, as they build pace and descend on the Venatori. Hugo shatters one in a spray of flying bones before they overrun him, tearing through his armour and into his flesh.

Velius finds his dagger almost useless, no living tissue to pierce, no eyes to blind, and they take him to the floor next and bite at his throat and face.

Laurus, fires lightning amongst the pack, and Dorian tries to wrap each of Laurus' targets in a barrier to deflect the worst of it. He needn't worry – in the narrow corridor, the pack descending from in front and behind, it isn't long before Dorian is watching them tear the other mage apart.

The screaming lasts less than a minute, each voice fading to the sound of clacking bone. The dogs have no muscle and no stomachs, so all they can do is chew at the mangled flesh and bone while Dorian retrieves his staff.

Blood runs between the flagstone, and he makes no attempt to avoid it as he steps back through their torn-apart corpses.

He doesn't release the hounds, unwilling to commit their bones to this dungeon forever. They follow at his heel as he picks his way through the abandoned fortress. He doesn’t recognise the heraldry, but he knows it can't be Fereldan – no Fereldan kennel master would leave his dogs to die.

The sun hurts his eyes against the snow when he emerges from the ruin. It's so much colder outside, and he can feel acutely his magic draining away to sustain the pack of dogs. Whatever they once were – man, beast, or never either at all – they run into the sunlight, bounding through the snow like any mortal dog. Their bones clatter, and their yelping, barking noises set Dorian's teeth on edge. The bitter wind whistles through their ribcages. Some of them still have collars around their necks, tags jingling from them. He'll absolutely have to horrify Cullen with this image when he returns to Skyhold.

He stumbles into the snow, losing his grip on his staff. A skeletal hound with a missing back leg snuffles around him, and then sits, expectant.

 _Good dog_ , he thinks to say. Can't, of course, but feels the sting of the attempt at his mutilated mouth. He reaches out with his bound hands and strokes the dog's skull, the bone cold and hollow.

He lets the dogs go.

He take ups his staff again and tries to stand, but his knees shake from under him, and he lands heavily in the snow. The power he has is halved under the collar, he can barely bring warmth to his fingers after what he's expended to free himself.

The blood from his mouth is bright red in the snow. He might die here.


	2. Through blinding mist I climb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They've always laughed easily together, even when there was still no trust beyond the battlefield. Drinking and joking is routine, welcomed, cherished now. They've been more than that for some time, too.

He wakes slowly, so he's not dead. Nor is he lying frostbitten in the snow, but under the same grey stones of that dungeon, so of course it was all a dream. The Fade is cruel, sometimes, to conjure something so satisfying and impossible.

His mouth is still stitched.

“Dorian.”

_Bull_ , he tries to say, but his lips scream in protest as he scrambles to sit up on the cot. He's alive and silenced, with wire threaded through his lips and a collar and shackles and he cannot breathe.

“Hey, hey,” the Bull says, taking Dorian's wrists as they scramble for a collar that isn't there anymore. He holds them firmly in his huge hands, crouched at Dorian's bedside. “It's okay, you're safe.”

He grunts behind his gag. This feels a violation, for the Bull to leave him this way, his mouth sewn shut like Dorian once accused him of wanting, that he'd once thought perhaps the Bull could envision for him. Here, with his wrists in the Bull's hands, he is betrayed.

“Dorian, peace. We're gonna wait for Ma'am, remember?”

Dorian doesn't remember anything, no conversation, nothing after bleeding in the snow and putting his undead pack of dogs to rest.

“Shit, you don't remember,” the Bull says. “You were awake when we found you, sorta. You were blue, we needed to get you warm, and we didn't know... crap. I'm going to go get Viv, okay?”

“No!” Dorian says, or at least mumbles, and then groans at the pain it causes him, head lolling forward.

“We need her to cut the wires, Dorian.”

He doesn't want Vivienne, he doesn't want anyone at all to see this. It's bad enough to wake with the Bull here, to have his mouth bound and his wrists held firm. He jerks his hands from the Bull's grasp and gestures at himself, tapping his chest.

“You can't do it yourself.”

He gestures more insistently. The Bull looks at him so softly Dorian can hardly stand it.

“Alright. Tell me what you need.”

Dorian flicks his wrist at him, and the Bull nods acknowledgement, but doesn't move.

“Dorian, don't send me away while you do this.” There's a waver to his voice, only the slightest thing, something the Bull could affect, but Dorian knows with every part of himself that he wouldn't. Has to believe it to be true; the alternative is awful.

_You have seen me when no other would recognize—_

He holds his hand up to his face in a mime the Bull picks up right away.

“A mirror, yeah. Alright.”

There are tools laid out on a table by the bed, pliers and small, sharp scissors, and wads of cotton. The Bull pulls up a chair opposite Dorian and holds up a mirror taken from the wall for Dorian to see his face in.

He can't stop the noise he makes at the sight of himself.

There's a bruise down the side of his face, and his moustache is matted with blood. There are nine holes above his lips, and nine below, strung together with wire. It's in plain vertical lines matching each hole below with the one above, though Dorian can feel the connecting slant of the wire from the top hole to the next bottom on the inside of his mouth. There is a lot of dried blood on his mouth and down his jaw and neck.

He takes up the little scissors with a shaking hand, and tries to slip them behind the wire crossing the middle of his mouth. His hands are shaking, he can't tell his damned left from right, he's going to cut his mouth, and he'll be even more disfigured than he already is.

He cuts the wire, and it doesn't free his mouth at all, and he should be able to do this, should be able to save himself from this, but he can't, he can't—

“Dorian, let me help you.”

He nods, keeps nodding until the Bull takes his head in hand, cradles his skull.

“I need you to keep still.”

He forces himself to stillness, can feel himself shaking with the effort as he looks up at the Bull. The Bull holds him firmly, takes up the little scissors, and begins. Dorian flinches every time he feels the cold metal of the scissors against his lips, but the Bull holds him still as he cuts through the other loops of wire.

What hurts is removing them. The Bull has to twist and slide them through the holes around his mouth, and as careful as he is, the broken wire is sharp, and awkward to remove. He moans, grunts through the pain, until the Bull removes the last of the wire.

He takes big gulps of air as the Bull releases him, hand gone gentle where it cradles his skull. Dorian wants then for the Bull to kiss his bloody, ruined mouth.

“Water.” His voice is hoarse from disuse, a broken thing in his throat.

He drains the first cup, and sips from the second. Thirst is a beast he can quiet, he can concentrate on the cold tin cup and the mineral taste, washing the copper from his tongue and teeth. His reflection in the surface of the water is too distorted to make out his face.

“How long was I held?”

“Three days. Just about,” the Bull says, taking up the seat by the bed again, watching Dorian. “The avalanche made it hard to follow them, then snowstorms after that.”

“I need a bath.”

“How about I send Vivienne to heal you up, and then I run you a bath? Sure I can find a tub somewhere.”

“Alright.”

The Bull seems a little reluctant to leave, but he does, and Dorian is left alone to drink from his cup. He thinks about how cold the water is, and tries not to think of anything else.

Vivienne is not gentle with him, like a healer might be. There's a barb about her bedside manner to be had, except that it's not unwelcome that she's firm with him.

“I wouldn't let them give you a healing potion when we found you, of course,” she says, as she holds his jaw and presses her fingers where his face is aching and mutilated. “The holes would have healed around the wire, and even for someone with little skill at healing, you know that healing an open wound is easier than an old one.”

He does know this, and one day he might even thank her for her attempts to save his face from scars. Luckily, Vivienne does not require his gratitude to continue, and she tells him idle gossip of Sarhnia's rebuilding, of the Red Templar stragglers and the other groups of Venatori they've been tracking, of the wildlife they fought on their way to him.

“The Bull swears he heard a dragon, but I shall let him tell you about that.”

In another room, where the new glass in the windows is frosted on the outside and obscured by steam on the inside, the Bull has drawn a bath for him in a large wooden tub. It isn't all he's done, of course, he would hardly be the man that Dorian is now accidentally on purpose falling into bed with if he had stopped at that; there's a razor, foam, soap and pumice, a mirror. Towels, fresh clothing and his travel kit set aside too.

“Shout if you need me.”

“I shall. I can, now.” He gestures weakly at his mouth. The Bull recognises it for what he means for it to be, but his laugh is forced.

He strips and climbs into the tub, settles in the hot water and submerges himself entirely, feels the heat of it press against his eyelids, his mouth, into his nose. When he surfaces, rubbing at his mouth, his hand comes away smeared with blood.

_Through blinding mist, I climb—_

It's easy not to think, and instead to scrub his nails of grime, to wipe gently at the marks that his bindings left, purpling bruises at his wrists. He doesn't hesitate to wipe the blood from his now healed face, easier now to face himself in the mirror, to study the marks where a huge needle was forced through his lips, dragging a wire with it. Becoming himself again – shaving his jaw, trimming his moustache – helps after any arduous campaign, and here is no different, except for the unsettled feeling he can't shake.

He ought to cry. He's wet from the bath already, and not wearing any make-up to ruin. It's dramatic, in a sad sort of way, but not enough to be a spectacle, unless he lets himself sob loudly enough to attract the Bull's attention. It's the opportune time, and all he feels is tired.

In fresh clothes and khol, he meet the Bull in the corridor.

“How you feeling?”

“Like a person again,” he says by rote, not realising until the Bull doesn't laugh that it's true.

“You hungry?”

“I'm starving. They weren't so kind as to feed me before they sewed my mouth shut.”

The Bull still doesn't laugh, and Dorian wonders if it would be easier if he did, even forced.

“The Boss snagged you a room on your own for the night. We ride out for Skyhold in the morning. You up for that?”

“I'll be fine on horseback,” he says, huffs a little, but doesn't feel it. It's not like he can't understand the way people are handling him carefully, or even why the Inquisitor hasn't made an appearance yet. He lets the Bull steer him to another room in the building – a home, near complete in renovations. A bedroom, with a large bed and a fire, and a table set with wine, bread and cheese, a steaming pot of stew.

The stew is rabbit, and he thinks about Velius skinning them, and he can't bring himself to care as he ladles himself a bowl full and settles at the table with a great chunk of bread to dip in it.

“Eat with me, won't you?”

The Bull sits with him, and ladles a portion for himself. Two fingers of his intact hand are blistered.

Dorian scowls, pointing his spoon for emphasis. “Is that frostbite?”

He looks at his hand with mild interest. “Just a little bit. Good thing you didn't get any, lying in the snow. Don't worry, I'm not about to lose more fingers.”

“I suppose you tried to dig your way through the avalanche?”

“Course I did.”

“You should see Vivienne about that,” he murmurs into his stew, averting his gaze.

“I did. She gave me a cream, said the mages in the tower give themselves cold blisters all the time, practising.”

Dorian eats until he's full, and then continues to eat hunks of bread and cheese, and drink watered wine as the wind rattles the windows and the fire burns warm in the hearth.

“Vivienne told me you think you saw a dragon.”

“I did,” the Bull says, insistent and immediately excited. “I don't think, I know. She was huge, and she flew right over the ridge before we found you, circled really high up above us.”

“A sign?”

“I don't know. Maybe she thought you'd make a good dinner.”

“No,” Dorian scoffs, “you honestly need to speak with that dragon expert we picked up in the Western Approach more, then you'd know that none of the high dragons are scavengers. I was half dead.”

“Two thirds dead, I reckon.”

“Exactly. Not nearly a meal for a high dragon.”

The quiet isn't unwelcome – others may have chosen then to fill it by asking for a retelling of events, but the Bull won't press him for such information. The Bull's company is always mercifully easy to keep.

“The Inquisitor is avoiding me, then.”

The Bull chews on his bread, and for once it's obvious that the wheels are turning, that his words are careful and measured. “I think she's just giving you some space.”

“She's spoken of her parents. One of her fathers was a mage under the Qun. I'm sure finding me was reminiscent of something she's long had nightmares about.”

“Probably, which is crap, but you're the one who got the saarebas treatment.”

Dorian winces.

“Shit, sorry.”

“It's what it was,” he says, shaking his head, trying to steady his voice before he continues. “That's entirely what it was meant to be.”

_They meant it for you,_ he doesn't say. It sits heavily in his chest instead, uncomfortable, ever-present knowledge.

“Adaar can't avoid me forever. Let her have tonight, and tomorrow I'll show her that's I'm alright.”

The Bull doesn't call him on it.

When Dorian yawns – it hurts his mouth enough to make him gasp with pain – the Bull bids him goodnight and leaves him to rest.

The spirits, predictably, find his trauma fascinating, and he dreams of the dungeon and everything that never happened.

*

Adaar can only scowl at him when they set out in the chill of morning, even the Bull bundled up in a cloak. He was her age once, and knows that face, the same one his father must have seen so many times, when Dorian was unwilling to cry in front of him.

“I'm alright,” Dorian tells her. Her scowl deepens. “Vivienne says the marks may not even scar.”

“Good,” she says, and mounts her hart.

The Bull meets his eyes, but doesn't say anything. Dorian is as disinclined to speak about it as Adaar is, and Dorian will take that over having to soothe dual fears for her companion and her parents.

Halfway back to Skyhold, an inn for a mining town, and the stablemaster looks at Dorian's dracolisk gamely, with a little something of how the Bull looks when they're about to fight something with claws.

“Have you ever seen one of these?”

“Not in the flesh,” she says. Her gaze lingers on the marks around his mouth. “But don't you worry, lad, she'll be in riding shape come morning.”

The Bull chuckles as Dorian joins him on the path trodden towards the tavern. “She asked for pay up front.”

“Can't blame her for that.”

They eat at a corner table, something a little more appetising than rations and though Orlesian, common enough to be filling. Vivienne retires to her room first, and Adaar when the conversation slows to trickle because she seems to be doing her best to ignore Dorian.

“She's cheerful,” Dorian says. The Bull is watching her wind her way through the tavern towards the stairs.

“Didn't realise she'd take this so hard.”

“She's young.” If it hurts that his Inquisitor won't talk to him after what happened, if it makes it feel as if she thinks him at fault, somehow... well, there's not much to be done about that. “She'll come around.”

The Bull buys another round as a group of patrons sing an Orlesian song that Dorian is sure the Chargers have a much ruder version of. He sets down two mugs, upsets foam over his hand, and licks it away as he squeezes into his chair again.

“This isn't Fereldan swill, is it?” He peers dubiously at the beer in front of him. A well rehearsed bit between the two of them. “I thought we were far enough into Orlais to be safe from it.”

“If you don't want it—” the Bull says, leaning across to drag the mug towards him. Dorian snatches it up, hands wrapped around it protectively.

“I'm nothing if not polite-” the Bull snorts a laugh at him, “I shan't have it go to waste.”

They drink their terrible beer, more malted than his preferred piss at Skyhold, from glass-bottomed tankards with lions set into the metal handles.

“Tell me how you found me.”

Bull sits back, considering him.

“It was the dragon.”

Dorian laughs.

“It was. I told you it circled, right? The others didn't see it, but we'd been all over the place. We had no idea where to go next, so we headed for where I said it looked like the dragon was circling overhead. We get over a slope, there's an old outpost and a bunch of dog bones, with you right there in the snow.”

“So I have a dragon to thank for my rescue?”

“Nah. It was probably seeing if you were worth eating. I don't know how long you were in the snow, but we thought you were dead. You were so pale. Vivienne warmed you up. The Boss wanted to cut the stitches, but when we realised it was wire we thought it'd hurt you, doing it in the field. I told you that. You woke up a bit, when I was carrying you down the mountain.”

“So you didn't go inside the outpost?”

“Yeah. We moved you there to warm you up. The Boss went down to the dungeon. Figured out the dogs were you.”

“Yes, they were me.”

“And you were collared.”

“It was a crude collar. Meant only to stay the magic of someone of moderate ability. Magical slaves, most likely. They couldn't give me any more magebane after they sewed my mouth shut, which ultimately cost them their lives.”

“But you had to do it without your staff, right? Or did you grab that somehow?”

“No, not until after.”

“Shit, Dorian.”

“Do you actually know enough about magic to be impressed?” he teases, smirking over his mug.

The Bull shrugs. “I've watched you enough. I know it's harder without a staff.”

There's a joke in there, but the Bull doesn't even grin, only looks to Dorian with rapt attention, offering the space to talk about it, only the parts he can look back on without his mouth itching.

“They were going to ransom me to my father. They never got very far, I would have been intrigued to find out how much he'd have paid to see me delivered safely. Or they'd have used me as bait, to draw the Inquisitor back to rescue me.”

_They wanted to hurt you worse than they hurt me_ , he thinks. Smothers it.

“A bit cliché for you, was it?” the Bull asks, tone light. “Waiting on someone to rescue you?”

Joking is easy, as if the hurt is months past, and not only days.

“I carry off 'dashing' much better than anyone else we know. It seemed a waste to wait on you to come crashing in when I could rescue myself with style.”

They've always laughed easily together, even when there was still no trust beyond the battlefield. Drinking and joking is routine, welcomed, cherished now. They've been more than that for some time, too.

As he drinks deeply from his tankard, Dorian catches the Bull watching the lump in his throat moving, though the attention is lacking the heat he's grown accustomed to. What he'd give, to have it now.

When he brushes foam from his moustache with his thumb, deliberately slow, lips parted just so, the Bull must recognise it as perfectly deliberate. He doesn't react like anticipated; no tease, no comment, only drinks from his own mug.

The Bull has been so good at not handling him like near-shattered glass, but in this, the Bull hesitates. Dorian might despair of himself that it's annoying and endearing in equal measure.

An old solution that won't solve anything. He wants it anyway.

 

“Would you like to go to bed with me tonight?”

There's a pause where a query might have been, but the Bull withholds it. Instead, he smiles softly.

“Yeah. I'd really like that.”


	3. I shall not be left to wander

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If his dreams have taken a turn for the worst, that's not unexpected. If every time he looks at the Bull he remembers waking up with his lips still sewn shut and feeling betrayed, well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Gorgeous fanart](http://fanjapanologist.tumblr.com/post/158040752198/i-only-want-you-to-be-gentle-he-says-feels-his) for this chapter!

 Upstairs in his room – a simple thing with a fire already burning in the hearth, not ostentatious like Val Royeaux, but just as obviously Orlesian – Dorian pulls the Bull downward to kiss him. The ache of his mouth is faintly glorious, pressed against the Bull's. He'd wanted to kiss the Bull when his lips were bleeding and ruined, to know again the incredible tenderness he is capable of.

“What do you want?” the Bull asks him, huge hands keeping him close, lips soft against his jaw. It will be all upon him tonight, the pace and tone of things, unless he requests otherwise. Expected, understandable that the Bull would offer it like this, but a burden he can't bear.

“I only want you to be gentle,” he says, feels his breath shudder with the admission. “Everything else, anything else. Only, be gentle to me tonight.”

It isn't that anything else would be unwelcome – he might just as happily have the Bull plow him into the mattress – but the Bull has withheld gentleness from him, been robust in his jokes, kept him from reminding him he might hurt. That the Bull hasn't assumed that softness is what he wants or needs gives him the space to wish for it.

_He is the rock to which I cling._

As asked, without fault, the Bull is gentle with him as he kisses him, as he scratches lightly at the short hair behind his ear. Dorian makes a familiar noise, presses into the contact. He brushes his thumb over Dorian's jaw, tips his chin up to better press their lips together. The skin of the Bull's middle is warm to the touch, solid under his hand where his presses above the belt that sits high on his waist.

He knows the scars there, the marks that make up a familiar skin. He wonders briefly if it feels different to kiss his marked mouth, whether the Bull will remember it when the marks are gone and the thing only a seldom-visited memory.

“I'm gonna get you out of these clothes.”

He helps Dorian out of his vambraces and his robe, and sets them carefully over a chair. Kisses him again, then lifts both of Dorian's bared palms in turn to his mouth to kiss them.

The Bull bends to unbuckle Dorian's boots for him, and Dorian takes the opportunity before he rises again to take the Bull's head in hands and worry his ears gently with his fingers. The Bull hums, shivers and rolls his neck into the touch. Sensitive, though now he doesn't pinch, only lightly rubs the lobe as the Bull undoes the tie of his leggings, untucks his under-shirt.

Eventually he's left with just socks on, and the Bull laughs then as Dorian pulls them off with his toes.

“You can leave them on, if you want to keep your footsies warm.”

“Don't think I haven't been tempted before now.”

The Bull touches his bare hip with a hand still gloved in leather and leans down to kiss him again, fingers curling gently against him as the other glances his side, careful not to knock his vambraces against Dorian's skin.

They make short work of his heavy armour pieces, setting them aside with Dorian's. His brace is a little tricky, removal in two parts, before and after taking off his trousers – support for a bum ankle and a dodgy knee. Dorian wants so much to offer to do it for him, though he hasn't before, only knows the method from observation. He hasn't dared to ask if it's help that would be welcomed yet.

Instead, with the Bull almost naked, he coaxes him close to remove the last of it; unwinds his eyepatch from his horn, gently pulls it away to reveal the knotted scar tissue where another eye once was, long before Dorian knew him.

“There you are.”

The Bull laughs softly, kisses him again.

“Here I am.”

Dorian's cock twitches with interest when the Bull runs his knuckles gently over the length of him, and he presses into the contact. The Bull doesn't tease him, gives him a few slow strokes.

“You wanna get on the bed for me? I'm gonna suck you off.”

They're practised in such things, and they know the only bed big enough for them both to do this on it is back at Skyhold. Instead Dorian gives the Bull a pillow and settles on the edge of the bed. The Bull leans down and kisses him sweetly, before he settles on his knees on the pillow between Dorian's.

The Bull's fist is huge and gentle around Dorian's cock, even for the callouses. He strokes him as the other hand ghosts along his inner thigh, and leans down to lick the head of his cock. Dorian groans, giving himself over to the feeling. There need be nothing else, when the Bull is focused entirely on him, on mouthing the shape of him, on rolling his balls in his huge palm. He hums and moans low, laps at Dorian's gathered precome, and he sucks Dorian into his mouth.

“Yes,” he groans.

Attentive and measured, the Bull sucks him, rolls his tongue against Dorian's cock, swirls it around the crown with each pass. Dorian wraps his hands around the Bull's horns, holds him there as his hips rock into the motion.

Wonders just for a second what price the Bull's horns would fetch, cut bloodily away from his head. He almost loses himself to the vision, memory of a threat, a dream, but the Bull looks up at him then, eye heavily lidded as he hollows his cheeks and sinks his mouth further onto Dorian's cock.

_Yet shall He be my guide._

Dorian touches his face instead, strokes the Bull's cheek – the Bull leans into the touch, even with Dorian still in his mouth. He's more wonderful than Dorian ever considered a person might be; the softness with which he touches Dorian at his request is beyond measure, as if he had longed to be permitted this tenderness all along.

The Bull laves his tongue along the underside of Dorian's cock and he pulls back, only to sink down and take Dorian into his throat. It isn't without effort, but it's practised, and Dorian shudders to feel the heat of the Bull's throat around the head of his cock.

“Bull.” He eases the Bull off his cock with a delightful wet pop. “I'll come if you keep going.”

“You can come, Dorian,” the Bull says, and turns his face into Dorian's hand to kiss his palm.

“If I come now I'll be asleep within seconds.”

“If you wanna sleep,” he murmurs.

“You have oil?”

“Sure.”

While the Bull goes to rummage in his belt pouches, Dorian shifts up with bed, leaving a sliver of room for the Bull when he comes back, bottle in hand. It's a bed built for one man, not two, and certainly not any amount of qunari. Dorian beckons him and the Bull climbs gamely onto the bed with him, crowding Dorian with his bulk.

Dorian seeks him for kisses, slow, open-mouthed passes of lips together. The Bull's body is exquisitely huge against him, solid. His cock lays heavy against Dorian's.

He takes the oil from the Bull – he's sure that that Bull's fingers chase his for a breath, to maintain their touch – and drips a little onto his fingers. Down between their bodies, Dorian takes the Bull's cock in hand and strokes him. Slowly, simply, none of the tricks he knows that will drive Bull wild. He doesn't want that tonight, didn't ask for that. The Bull's breath shudders out of him anyway, a moan from deep in his chest.

“Fuck my thighs.”

It takes some rearranging, a bed much too small for the both of them. It isn't the first time Dorian has kicked the Bull in the scramble, but he only laughs and catches Dorian's ankle, brings the foot up to his mouth to kiss as Dorian leans back on his elbows, stops mid-turn, a little breathless for the sight.

Dorian makes it onto his stomach, hips canted a little up, legs together.

“That it,” the Bull coaxes, straddles Dorian's thighs, runs a huge hand down his back. Oil splashed over the Bull's hand and then pushed between Dorian's legs, fingers pressing along his balls.

He presses his cock in next, shuffles forward until their bodies are pressed together. Fucking, as close as they might if the Bull were inside him. The Bull leans over him, his belly pressing against Dorian's back, and kisses along his shoulder.

“This good, Dorian?”

“Yes, oh,” he breathes, as the Bull's cock slides against his, slick and hot. The Bull eases himself down gently to his elbows, laying his weight along Dorian's back – not all of it, Dorian knows, but enough for it to put his torso to the mattress, to press the sensitive head of his cock there against the cotton.

He fucks him like that, with long, slow strokes as he kisses Dorian's shoulder, and his mouth when Dorian cranes his neck around for it.

Nobody has ever been this gentle with him – not, he knows, because all of them were unwilling to be – but he has never wanted this before. Slow, yes, indulgent, absolutely, but not tender like this. He has never wanted what the Bull gives without hesitation; more than a soft hand, gentleness in every movement and touch and word, in the way the Bull _looks_ at him now.

“Dorian,” he says, low against Dorian's ear. He might be imagining that his name in the Bull's mouth tonight sounds like a prayer.

_You composed the cadence of my—_

The Bull adjusts minutely, and the change presses the Bull's cock more insistently against his balls, the head stroking over them as the Bull cants his hips back, enough space between Dorian's body and the bed to press his cock along Dorian's as he pushes forward.

A thought comes, unbidden: would Hugo have fucked him like this, if he'd decided to? Would he have pressed him down on the stone floor and forced himself inside, Dorian's cock limp instead of hard, pressed to cold flagstone instead of warm cotton?

“Bull,” he groans, centring himself on where he really is. It never happened, the threat only in passing. His dreams, well, the Fade is a tricky place, and spirits might have fun with what never was. But here, the body pressed to him is wanted, requested. “Bull. If you just, _kaffas_ , yes!”

They won't have his silence, and they won't have this.

“Come on, Dorian.”

The Bull lifts himself a little, enough for Dorian to get his knees planted a little better, to lift his hips and give the Bull room to slip his hand under them and take Dorian's cock in hand. It won't take much.

He strokes him counter to his thrusts, a slow, steady movement until each of Dorian's pants is a moan too, as he pushes back against the Bull.

“Yes, yes!”

He comes over the Bull's fingers, turns his head blindly for the Bull to kiss him. He does, small kisses across the corner of his mouth and his jaw and Dorian gasps and sighs through his orgasm until it subsides.

A shift of his messy hand, wrapping it around both of them, stroking himself towards his own climax, while Dorian moans, the twinge of painful over-stimulation a wonderful counter to the warmth spread through him.

“Shit, Dorian, _fuck_.”

The Bull comes after that, drops his head against Dorian's shoulder and grunts his way through it, thighs bunching to push their bodies as close as they can get as he spills onto his fist, the bed. Even that is gentle, in its excess.

They stay for a long time, bodies together, the Bull's chest against his back, and just breathe. The Bull kisses his hair, shoulder, his neck, the softest touches of his scarred mouth to Dorian's damp skin. The tenderness is almost overwhelming, that it should last beyond their climax, that it should be so genuine.

Eventually they part, sticky and sated, and the Bull goes for a wash cloth to wipe them down. The bed too, where clearing away his come leaves a sizeable dampness. Dorian presses his palm to it, and lets it warm.

“How does anyone without magic stand sleeping in the wet patch?” he muses, as the Bull sits with him on the bed, humming and leaning down to kiss his shoulder.

“You want me to stay tonight?” the Bull asks. Dorian sighs.

“The bed's hardly made with the two of us in mind.”

“We can make it work. I promise I'm comfy.”

Dorian huffs out a laugh, and leans his head against the Bull's bicep.

_Rest at His right hand—_

*

The journey to Skyhold is uneventful. If his dreams have taken a turn for the worst, that's not unexpected. If every time he looks at the Bull he remembers waking up with his lips still sewn shut and feeling betrayed, well.

When they reach the castle, there's no need for a report. Word has already spread of what happened, and there isn't much more that an account could add, except detail. If people want to let their eyes linger over the dotted scabs around his mouth, so be it. If people whisper when he passes, that's hardly new.

Cabot looks sideways at him when he seats himself at the bar of the Herald's rest.

“A glass of your vilest wine, if you would.”

Cabot grumbles to himself but does as bid. He slides it across the bar, but doesn't take Dorian's offered coin.

“You're on a tab tonight. And then I'm gonna lose the tab. Mysteriously forget about it.”

“Oh. Alright.”

It feels a little like being a child again and milking the sympathy for his broken arm, but he's not about to complain about it.

The place fills up, the Chargers and the Bull piling in to fill the seats across all floors, Cullen's men amongst them, later followed by Cullen himself. He can hear Blackwall and Varric, and even Cassandra has put in an appearance to welcome them home.

“Oi,” Sera says, elbowing him in the ribs as she slips into the seat next to him, and passes him one of the foaming mugs of beer she's holding. “Heard you was back. Heard a lot of things.”

He turns to her, and she pulls a face.

“Shite, Mister Pretty. You killed them good, yeah?”

“I did.”

“Too right you did. How'd you do it? Drink.”

He drinks from his mug, and she twists around on her stool to lean back against the bar.

“Necromancy.”

“Ugh, creepy stuff. Tell me quick, then.”

“I reanimated a pack of mabari skeletons and mauled them to death.”

“Andraste's saggy tits. You killed them proper good.”

Later, Adaar leans on the bar next to him and drinks an entire mug of ale before she speaks.

“So, I—” she hums, hesitates. “Can you forgive me, for not being better to you? I should have been better. I'm really glad you're okay. How I acted, when—”

“It's alright,” he says. She's young, still learning tact. He wants to drink, not to think about it.

“I've been praying for you. I'll keep praying for you.”

He thinks of Adaar at her morning prayers with Cassandra or Cullen, her head bowed. Knows the sincerity with which she'd think of him, praying to a god most people don't even think cares for her kind.

“And I'm going to keep drinking,” he says. Not unkindly, and she laughs.

Even the Charger's ribbing is gentler than usual by the time he gets to their table, well into the jolly stage of drunk. He slides onto a chair next to Krem, opposite the Bull, who he does his best to ignore, without being painfully obvious about it.

“Hear you got rid of some more Venatori,” Krem says, clapping him robustly on the shoulder. “Good on you, Altus.”

“I hope it was painful for them,” Skinner says, and even her constant undercurrent of barely-contained murderous fury doesn't seem meant for him. “Slaver bastards.”

“Oh, it was!” he says cheerfully. “I'm very certain they suffered a great deal.”

The Chargers toast to Venatori suffering.

He knows the Bull has been watching him all night. Worried, probably, though he's subtle enough about it. He must understand that ills are cured by getting ridiculously drunk, and Dorian is absolutely willing to give it a shot.

Word has spread of the nature of his escape, and before the night is out he finds himself holding court over several tables, all the attention on him. He's very drunk, and feels fantastic for it. Some people even lean against the railings of the upper floor, looking down as he recounts his tale.

“And then I, their new master, set the ghostly hounds loose upon them!”

The Chargers do a great job with their stage gasps, and Dalish even fake-swoons into Skinner's waiting arms. Rocky chooses then to start a chorus of something off the cuff, in a tune they all know, that starts with “the ghost dogs of the mountain, at necromancer's heel—”

“They were such good dogs,” Dorian sighs, flopping down into a chair next to a mildly stricken Cullen. “Loyal. _Good_ _dogs_.”

Cabot does turf them all out of the Rest eventually, and as the last of the Chargers head back to their camp, the Bull falls into step beside him. Or, he walks with him as Dorian concentrates on putting one foot in front of the other.

“If you're walking me back to my room,” he says, and knows very well he's over-enunciating, in the way of a drunk person trying to pass for sober, “can we take the scenic route? I should clear my head.”

He thinks really, he's not ready to be alone with himself yet.

“Sure, big guy.”

The stairs are quite a feat, as he takes them deliberately slowly. The Bull comes up behind, a hand at the small of his back when Dorian wobbles precariously near the top. On the battlements the cold mountain air reaches them, and they take the long walk around towards the mage's tower.

Dorian stops before they reach it, leans his arms against the parapet and looks out over the mountains. He feels a bit more focused already, but still drunk. Out here there's quiet, and not really much in the way of distraction. It's easy to think, to think too much.

“You doing okay, Dorian?” the Bull asks, as he leans on the wall next to him.

“I'm not really, no,” he says thoughtfully. “But I'm very drunk, which is helping.”

“Can't stay drunk forever.”

“I think I could give it a go.”

They stand together on the battlements and watch the cloud roll through the night. The snow and the moonlight makes it bright, and give it a unique melancholy; how Dorian longs for an ink-black night, something to envelope him. Here, even in the dark he feels exposed.

“This was for you,” he says, in a rush of breath. He shouldn't— “This was meant for you. They were going to – no, I shouldn't tell you this. You don't need to hear it.”

“But you need to say it. I've probably heard worse, Dorian. You can tell me.”

He shouldn't, and yet he can feel the words set to burst from him like physical press in his chest and throat.

“They'd have sewn your mouth shut. They would have taken your horns. Your skin. _Kaffas_. One of them wanted to skin you alive.”

“They _were_ Vints.” It's a weak attempt at a joke. Any other time, Dorian might have agreed.

“Yes, and I'm a Vint. They're my kin, my brothers. Did you ever think me capable of that? The Vint who might make you bow, geld you like you were an animal, cut you into _pieces_ just to see you scream?”

“Dorian, I thought you might have been a bit of an asshole, but I didn't ever think of you being one of those Vints.”

He can't look at the Bull. He watches the mountains instead.

“But I thought it of you. I thought you'd be so very Qunari; I thought you would happily see me collared, see me with my mouth sewn up. The very worst thing that has ever been done to my body, and I thought once you wanted it for me.”

He can feel the words getting away from him, can feel the strain in his throat and the sting behind his eyes, but he can't stop.

_Endlessly far beneath my feet—_

“I told myself I didn't believe it any longer, but I look at you now and I know, I _know_ you don't want it, but you might have, before. When you first met me, you might have wanted it, you might not have cared if it had happened.”

He groans, putting his head on his arms against the parapet. “And I know how unfair that is.”

“It's not unfair,” the Bull says, voice gentle. “I was Qunari, it's not so strange that you'd think I could think like that. But,” he goes on, shifting his stance, which makes Dorian lift his head from his arms and risk a glance at the Bull. “I never wanted that for you, not even when I thought you might be an asshole.”

Dorian laughs weakly. The Bull's smile is sad.

“I was always bad at not caring. I'd have cared if this had happened to you. Being part of the Qun, it's what you're born into. Or converts choose it, knowing what's going to happen to them. It's not something I'd _want_ for anyone, it just is what it is. I-shit. It's alright if you don't believe me.”

“I do. But I just can't get out of my own head. I can't stop thinking about everything that happened. Plenty that didn't.”

He feels tears begin to leak out of his eyes, and wipes hastily at them with his thumb and fingers. He's not usually a tearful drunk, and yet here he stands, sniffling through a stilted confession.

“I can't stop thinking about what they'd have done to you. What you'd have done. You would have fought, you'd have torn your face apart to free yourself. You'd have fought so hard, and they'd have destroyed you.”

He hates himself for being spared by those who could do such things, to be valued in any way by men who would have butchered the Bull. He puts his forehead on one upturned hand and stifles a sob.

“They didn't get me, they got _you_.” The Bull reaches out and soothes a hand along the curve of Dorian's back. “I didn't get hurt, and you can't torture yourself because I might of, if things'd gone down differently. I'm here, and I'm okay.”

Dorian turns into the Bull's body, buries his face against the Bull's chest and makes a truly pathetic spluttering noise. The Bull wraps his arms around him and holds him.

Maker, if only he loved a man as good at this. It's an absolutely horrible time to wonder if perhaps he might already be falling in love with him. He does it all the same.

“If you want to drink until you can work through it, then I'll drink with you.” Dorian can feel the Bull's words rumble through his chest when he speaks. “If you want to talk, we'll talk. Hey, If you want to to try hitting me with a stick, we can do that. I think the Boss got a lot out of it when she tried.”

“I'm being a fool, aren't I?” Dorian mutters, sniffling.

“Nah, don't worry about it. It's okay to get messed up by things. But I'm not going to lose you to it, alright?”

Is he enough the Bull's for him to lose?

_And though I bear scars beyond counting, nothing can break me except—_

“Alright.”

Dorian stays there huddled against the Bull a while longer, until he's stopped crying and only has his hitched breathing to show for his outburst. It could just as well be hiccups, if anyone were to see him; he is still quite drunk.

Maybe he'll wake in the morning with a hangover, but the worst will be over. Maybe he'll have tormented dreams and wake up sweat-soaked and anxious again. Either prospect feels easier, as the Bull strokes a huge hand slowly along his back.

He will not die here, and he will not break here.

“Weren't you meant to be walking me to my chambers?” he says, pushing away from the Bull's warmth.

“Come on then. I'll tuck you in and everything, if you like.”

_I am not alone. Even_  
_As I stumble on the path_  
_With my eyes closed, yet I see  
_ _The Light is here._


End file.
